Who is Happy in Russia

Nikolai Nekrasov worked on his main poem "Who is Happy in Russia" for almost twelve years. The history of the poem's publication was accompanied by numerous censorship cuts. The hero of the poem is the Russian people, travelers searching for... a happy person in Russia. Happiness and the wealth of privileged classes, in the author's opinion, are the unchanging constants of both pre-reform and post-reform times. The poet cannot find examples of peasant prosperity in the search for a "flawless province," "unbutchered volost," "abundant village." The book opens with an introductory article by Doctor of Philological Sciences Mikhail Makeev, "The Last Poem of Nekrasov," prepared specifically for this edition. Following the publishers of the "Complete Works of Nikolai Nekrasov" (L., Nauka, Vol. 3, 1982), we have tried to treat the author's spelling and punctuation with care.